Biomedical Engineering

Collection Development Statement

Last updated July 2020

Overview

The collection’s primary focus is to support teaching and research in the Whiting School, related labs/centers/institutes, and across JHU.

Programs of study are a BS, MSE, MSE in Innovation and Design (through the Center for Bioengineering Innovation and Design [CBID]), dual-degree MSE (from JHU)/MS (from Tsingua University in China), PhD, and MD/PhD.

• Focus areas include computational medicine, data science, genomics and systems biology, imaging and medical devices, immunoengineering, neuroengineering, and translational cell and tissue engineering. Artificial intelligence in medicine is also offered to medical students, residents, and clinical fellows.

Departments/disciplines/programs/subject Areas Supported

This collection supports:

• All BME-related research throughout the university
• Whiting School’s Engineering for Professionals (EP) program
• Krieger School’s Advanced Academic Programs (AAP)
• Related Carey Business School programs and projects
• Related labs/centers/institutes such as Institute of Computational Medicine, and Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics (LCSR)

General

This collection supports all patron groups from freshmen through research faculty.

BME is the largest major in the Whiting School of Engineering, and has been one of the top five majors at Homewood since 2014. This is a very sophisticated and wide-reaching topic at JHU, and includes departments, labs/centers/institutes, and other activities such as participation in business plan competitions throughout the U.S., and hackathons to support global medical challenges as well as emergency needs such as Ebola and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Because of the importance of the journal literature to research in engineering, serial subscriptions are given collection priority. Online databases and reference works are preferred over print, although some BME undergraduates prefer some of their textbooks and reference books (e.g., anatomy) in print. Monographs are purchased selectively in print or electronic format based on relevance to departmental teaching and research, and user requests.

Some business-related content is also purchased, although for the most part, the business collection supports much of the BME-related research at JHU. A few items are purchased from the Engineering fund, due to the fact that the vast majority of BME/CBID-related coursework and research require market research, health reimbursement information, and related information.

• Main call number: R856

Formats Selected

The department generally has a strong preference for online resources. Research periodicals are preferred, and reference works include literature databases, databases of searchable textbooks and handbooks, individual handbooks, and occasional databases which provide special tools such as 3D-anatomical modeling, although these are almost always purchased by Welch.

Individual standards requested by faculty or students are occasionally purchased in print, if they are not held in one of our electronic sources or obtainable through ILL. After several steps, the bound print copy is eventually housed in the Libraries Service Center (LSC), and is available to circulate and be borrowed through ILL. (Standards also support Homewood offices such as JH Lab Safety.)

Preferred formats:

• Journals
• Conference proceedings
• Literature and specialty databases
• Books

Material acquired by request or selectively:

• Reference works
• Handbooks
• Textbooks
• Standards

Material not collected:

• Biographies
• Ephemera
• Histories
• Juvenile works
• Manuscripts
• Microform
• Pamphlets
• Preprints
• Workbooks

Languages Collected

English

Chronological or geographical focus

Emphasis is on current and recent scholarship.

Collaborations

• Welch Librarians: While the undergrads work on Homewood campus, most of the grad students, postdocs, profs, and other researchers work at East Baltimore; therefore, the BME librarian communicates/works with her BME counterpart at Welch, as well as the other Welch librarians as needed, due to the heavily medical content of most BME courses and research.
• Business Librarian: The BME and Business librarians co-teach several of the CBID classes as well as consult about JHTV (Tech Transfer) and other related courses or offices, again due to the intense need for business-related information by almost everyone in the BME department.